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Venezuelan president has yet to return to Venezuela after reportedly undergoing emergency surgery in Cuba A meeting of Latin American leaders in Venezuela planned for next month has been cancelled, raising further doubts over the health of the country's convalescing president, Hugo Chavez. Chavez has yet to return to Venezuela after reportedly undergoing emergency surgery in Cuba on 10 June. But the Venezuelan president had been tipped for a triumphant homecoming at the summit of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States, or Celac, on 5 July. The summit, which was to be held on Margarita Island, would have coincided with the 200th anniversary of Venezuela's independence from Spain. Heads of state, including Brazil's Dilma Rousseff, Ecuador's Rafael Correa and Chile's Sebastin Piera, had planned to attend. Today, however, senior officials in Venezuela and Brazil confirmed that the meeting would no longer take place. Authorities in Caracas said the meeting ...

Efforts to protect New Mexico site stepped up as lab officials give assurances that dangerous materials can resist blaze Los Alamos residents evacuated over wildfire in pictures Teams of firefighters are battling to prevent a wildfire in New Mexico from reaching the Los Alamos National Laboratory, America's largest and most important research and development site for nuclear weapons. The fire that started on Sunday, probably as a result of a downed power line, has forced the entire 11,000 population of Los Alamos to be evacuated and has reached within a road of the outer perimeter of the lab on its south-western and western sides. An acre of vacant land on the south-western border of the lab experienced a spot fire, though that was quickly brought under control. The wildfire has drawn attention to at least 10,000 drums of radioactive waste dating back to the Cold War era which are being stored in a part of the laboratory known as Area G. The 55-gallon drums are stored three deep o...

MPs' decision paves way for more EU and IMF cash but protesters teargassed amid chaos in Syntagma Square At 4.39pm on Wednesday the Greek parliament approved a five-year austerity plan that could sink or save the country. Many hoped the vote might end the saga that has kept Europe and markets across the world on tenterhooks over the past week. But no sooner had the MPs cast their ballots and European Union leaders had welcomed the "landmark" vote, the real drama began outside parliament where another approach to democracy saw protesters battle with riot police. Toxic levels of teargas filled the air and Syntagma Square, the nerve centre of Greece's new resistance movement, descended into chaos. Within minutes, the plaza resembled a warzone. The detritus of battle lay everywhere with burning barricades, smashed pavements, shattered masonry, looted shops, destroyed kiosks and trees. "Dangerous amounts of teargas are being used to terrorise people," communist...

Yingluck Shinawatra denies her brother, Thaksin, in exile to avoid corruption charges, is pulling the strings from Dubai Songwan Khomwang has never voted before, but it did not take the 19-year-old long to pick a candidate for next Sunday's general election. "I would like a woman to lead the country," she declared, as her choice roused a cheering crowd of thousands in a dusty field outside the north-eastern village of Tumbol Yarng. "I've seen too many men in power." Yingluck Shinawatra could become Thailand's first female prime minister. But that is not her sole attraction, conceded her admirer: "I hope if she gets in she will bring back Thaksin." When the Puea Thai party unveiled the youngest sister of the exiled former Thai leader as its candidate, most people thought it would play into hands of the incumbent Democrats. Now the decision looks like a masterstroke, because Yingluck is putting a fresh, attractive, feminised face on her brother...

No4 seed wins 6-3, 6-4, 6-4 Scot will play winner of Rafael Nadal in semi-final Andy Murray reached the Wimbledon semi-finals for the third successive year with a routine 6-3, 6-4, 6-4 victory over the unseeded Spaniard Feliciano Lpez. The first two sets were as comfortable as the No4 seed could possibly have expected at this stage, with Murray playing very well but receiving a significant amount of help from his opponent. The Scot wrapped up the first set comfortably, piling the pressure on Lopez and taking the set 6-3. Lpez is a talented player on grass and making his third appearance in the Wimbledon quarter-finals and he had been hugely impressive in a straight-sets win over Andy Roddick in the third round, but few were predicting another upset here. The only surprise was that it took Murray until the sixth game to engineer a break point. And then he needed three before he did finally move ahead, Lpez netting an attempted drop shot. The Scot was on cruise control, and he could e...

Experts brand as unreliable the key evidence that Raffaele Sollecito's DNA was found on victim Meredith Kercher's bra The appeal by Amanda Knox and her Italian former boyfriend against their convictions for the killing of British student Meredith Kercher took a significant turn on Wednesday when independent, court-appointed experts dismissed as unreliable forensic evidence crucial to the prosecution case. Two Rome university professors said there was no certainty that traces of DNA found on the alleged murder weapon, a knife, belonged to Kercher. They added that the vital piece of evidence which linked Knox's ex-boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, to the scene of the murder a trace of his DNA on Kercher's bra clip could have got there by contamination, as the defence maintained at the trial. The DNA traces on the knife, which was discovered by police in Sollecito's kitchen, "appear unreliable in as much as [they were] not supported by scientifically validated anal...

Hit F5 to refresh or turn on the automatic widget below Email thoughts and chat to evanfanning@gmail.com Follow all today's game and more in our daily live blog Follow Evan on Twitter, if that's your thing Second set: Murray 6-3, 1-2 Lopez* Lopez holds serve but he nearly blew it with a double-fault at 40-30. Murray struggles when Lopez gets to the net but that is a relatively rare occurrence. Jack Nicklaus is here but I'm giving that to Jack Nicholson without even an audition. "Why not jazz the film up a bit?" asks Stuart Goldacre. "Have Andy playing Judy, Judy as Andy with Marion Bartoli madly swinging her racket at nothing in particular as Feliciano? Jamie can be on the phone from somewhere afar." Mmmm. "Surely Pippa Middleton could play the girl from the famous upskirt tennis poster?" asks Michael Angus. These ideas are getting worse. If they don't improve I'm giving all the roles to Eddie Murphy who'll play them in fat sui...